I've been reading 'Freedom Evolves' by Dan Dennett over the past few weeks (and working very hard, hence the lack of posts). The book is about whether and how free will can exist if we are all essentially just a collection of cells that obey deterministic laws. Dennett makes a compelling and inspiring case that it does exist (although maybe not in the form that many would regard as free will), but one of the things that has really stuck in my mind is a question of design.
When discussing speed of decision making, Dennett talks about returns of service in tennis being designed. Which of course they are, but I had never equated a person working on a product - refining it, testing it, improving it - with an athlete practicing a particular move over and over again - refining it, testing it, improving it. Like many good ideas (or perhaps successful memes) it's completely obvious when pointed out, and then you start to see the parallels everywhere. The feeling you get when you're impressed by a good bit of design is very similar to that you have when you see a bit of sporting excellence. So my delight at finding out that iPods pause if you accidently yank out the headphone cable is the same kind of experience as my joy at seeing Cristiano Ronaldo's backheeled goal against Aston Villa yesterday. They both elicit an admiration of human intelligence and creativity, and, for me, a sense of pride at what humans are capable of.
Of course one might expect good design from these two sources. I'm not a Manchester United fan, and my doses of astonishment and delight are much more frugally rationed by the sports team from my area. Such is life.
The other point that Dennett makes, citing Hume, is that morality is a kind of human technology. Again, despite years of reading and thinking about this stuff, no way of looking at morality that I have come across has resonated quite so clearly as this idea. Starting from evolved behaviour, and then refined, tested and improved by generations of humans, morality is something we make - for our own benefit as a social animal. It doesn't come from any external source, and it doesn't need to in order to have meaning and force. Dennett's book is essentially a plea to look at free will (and by extension morality) as something designed by humans, and also to ignore the claims of the transcendental - so that we do not view freedom and morality as unquestionable and untouchable externalities to our animal natures, but instead as something we make, something that improves, and something that we continue to try to perfect. Keep the R&D rolling.
